


To Be Alone (with you)

by fightingfit_canthit



Category: Gideon the Ninth - Tamsyn Muir
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-20
Updated: 2019-10-19
Packaged: 2020-12-24 11:51:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,757
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21099017
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fightingfit_canthit/pseuds/fightingfit_canthit
Summary: Gideon struggles with her new reality, and Harrow crashes back into hers.





	To Be Alone (with you)

**Author's Note:**

> Haven't written a fanfiction since I was a fragile babe, but don't worry. 
> 
> I'm still a fragile babe. 
> 
> I'd say this is in honor of the GTN discord server, but I feel like they're gonna be mad.

Gideon hated the stillness. 

It was unfortunate that she didn’t think very long about the implications of throwing her physical body onto a rusty spike and fusing her soul with Harrow’s own. If she had put more thought to it, she would’ve realized how much she missed the feeling of breathing. The way the stale recylc air rustled her hair and contributed to her nervous tick of raking her fingers back through her chopped ginger half-curls. The sensation of her muscles straining through countless practice repetitions-- and the triumph of gritting through just one more. Gideon really, really missed her body. She’d put a lot of work into that. 

Aiglamene was going to die from a laughing aneurysm as soon as she found out Gideon’s last mortal words were “For the Ninth!” It was like they always said: the more she struggled against the pull of the Ninth House, the more it dragged her back into its depths. If Gideon was alive enough to be embarrassed, she’d turn as red as her hair. At this point, though, there wasn’t much that could move her to any real feeling. 

Still, if the Emperor Himself handed out a big redo button on the final moments of her life, she was dead certain of one thing:

She’d do it the same, every time. 

Her necromancer obviously still needed her, though Gideon had no fucking clue how to help. 

Since they first awoke on the Emperor’s whitewashed expanse of a star-ship, Harrow had been fighting to stay awake, fighting to find the will to care, and fighting to stay in control of her deteriorating mind. Gideon had a front row seat to watch her necromancer slip into a deep and soul crushing depression, and she was along for the ride, for better or worse. 

But a front row seat was still better than the alternative of being gone-- or being something else. It had taken a while for Gideon to even remember that she was a self. Horrifyingly, the first few days Gideon thought that she was Harrow. Gideon had no cognitive separation between what was Harrow and what was Gideon.They had woken up feeling nothing, thinking nothing, functioning just one brain cell beyond autopilot. It wasn’t like she had any fucking clue what she was doing, being new to this whole disembodied soul experience. For some reason Cavalier training didn’t prepare her for this, and Harrow certainly had no clue what was going on. 

In reality, they were both heartsick, damaged, numb and overwhelmed with grief. Not just for each other, but for everyone they lost to the halls of Canaan House. Since their initial meeting with the Emperor, they had been left alone to wander the corridors of his massive ship, and the isolation after weeks of companionship just seemed to compound their feeling of wrung-out insanity. 

"You’ll meet your teachers when you’re ready," his Holiness had said gently before disappearing with an air of having more important things to do. "This new life will require… adjustments. It will be kinder, I think, to enter it slowly." 

Fat lot he understood about it, they thought. 

They were given a room to rest and recover: square, white, and nondescript. There were endless looping hallways (square, white, and nondescript), and massive mess halls (you guessed it), and small round windows framing the black expanse of space. They often stopped to stare into the void; a bland longing for nothingness seemed to be their new favorite obsession at all hours of the day. 

They existed in this fog of emptiness for what felt like days. It was hard for them to tell-- the lights of the ship never dimmed, and the hours weren’t bracketed by any measurement of time. They wore the same sterile smock they had woken up in, both for lack of other options and for lack of caring. Their legs felt like leadened weights, feet barely clearing the floor as they wandered about. They never compelled her body to eat, and only shuffled to the mess hall for a glass of water to stave off their growing nausea. They could feel themselves shrinking, condensing, as if everything that was left of them was slowly collapsing into the black hole that now occupied their chest. 

Unmoored, they thought. That was the word. They had nothing. They should be nothing.

Things would have progressed to their logical conclusion if the black vestments of Harrow’s House had not appeared in their room by the joke of some unseen launderer. The black robes of the Ninth House were folded neatly at the edge of their bed, made so impossibly clean that they loomed larger than reality against the stark white. A small pot of white paint and box of black char sat neatly on top of the pile. There was no sign as to who placed them there, or why. They had just left for a few minutes to refill their water glass. 5 minutes, tops. 

Harrow’s body seemed frozen for 3 terrible heartbeats, eyes fixed on the offending garments. Then it shuddered haltingly, stumbled, and collapsed before the bed in a shivering mass of tears and rage. Harrow laid there on the floor, wrapped in the cocoon of her own feeble arms, the gravity of Gideon’s death finally forcing her down from space. She beat her fists against her quivering chest, as if that could stop the hateful pulse of her broken heart. Her pain was intense, all-consuming, and her breath came in short and hitched, a one-way ticket to a panic attack. 

Gideon stood and watched, still trapped in a sense of empty irritation. She had really hoped for a wardrobe change, though this was at least better than the smock. It was starting to smell. She sighed in consternation, watching her body dissolve into mellow dramatics. She didn’t have the energy for all this. 

Wait.

Not my body. Not me at all. Harrow. 

Harrow is crying. Why is Harrow crying?

Oh, shit. 

The reality of her own self slammed back into Gideon like a sword pommel to the back of her head, and she barked out an incredulous laugh. Gideon raised her hands up to her face, not expecting to see her calloused palms or the feathery training scars across the back of her hands. But her hands were there-- her own miraculous hands. She looked down and began patting for her body frantically. She grabbed at the dark threadbare shirt and trousers she wore under her penitent's robes, whole and solid under her own hands. Her palms scrambled up to where her heart should be, expecting the worst. She sighed in relief, and reveled in the feeling of moving her own lungs.   
Solid. Not as hole-y as I expected. Ha. 

She felt her own heartbeat, strong as ever against her chest. It was beating a mile a minute. She looked up at her quaking bag of bones for a necromancer and yelled, excited.

“Harrow, Harrow! Look! Get off the floor! You did it, Harrow!” Gideon knelt down and reached out to touch Harrow’s shoulders, to push the hair from her bloodshot eyes. “Harrow, you master of death, you beautiful genius, we made it work! Hey! Har…” 

Gideon’s hand fell on empty air, as if Harrow really was just a wisp on the wind. Her Harrow, her one flesh, one end, could not see her. Could not hear her. Could not feel her touch. Gideon felt the rushing swell of joy leave her just as quickly as it had arrived. 

Harrow had stopped shaking, but the tears were still rolling silently down her face and she was shaking her head back and forth. Now that Gideon could think for herself, she was surprised the younger girl had any energy left to lose precious tears. Harrow’s eyes screwed shut for three heartbeats, three painful breaths, and then she began to drag herself up to the edge of the bed. She pushed herself to her knees, panting through tears in the effort. Gideon tried to think for herself (She was Gideon Nav, dammit!), replaying the past who-knows-how-many-days in her mind, and knew it was only the energy of Harrow’s grief that kept her from passing out. She was wasting away. She was dying. 

Harrow reached out and dragged the pot of white paint from the pile before turning back, collapsing with her back against the bedside. She cradled the alabaster jar against her birdcage of a chest, struggling to catch her breath. Her eyes fell shut again, brow tense with sorrow. 

“Oh, Griddle.” 

Gideon’s eyes snapped up to meet her necromancer’s, but Harrow was now staring blankly at the ceiling, her head lolling back against the bed sheets. 

“I hardly think of anything but you.” 

Harrow’s voice was a course and battered whisper, vocal cords raw to being used for the first time in days. Her body shuddered again, the sobs threatening to overtake her once more. Harrow closed her eyes and took another deep, unsteady breath. The minutes stretched on as she fought a losing battle to keep from shaking. Tears clung tight to the corners of her eyes, and Gideon ached to brush them away. Her own growing sense of grief kept her rooted in place. 

“Hey, Harrow, it’s okay. It’s gonna be okay.” She tried for soft, calm, begging. She would let Harrow see her beg, let her see her on her knees just for her, if only she’d look. “I didn’t go anywhere. No need to make this weird. I’m right here, I’m not going anywhere. Just look at me.”

“You know, I hated seeing you in this stupid face paint. Never matched your eyes.” Harrow was talking to ghosts. She let the little pot drop to the floor with a clunk. “You were too bright for all this.”

Gideon rocked back on her heels until she plopped onto her ass. They both sat there in contemplative silence, a foot away from each other but entirely alone. Every now and again Harrow would dissolve into silent sobs, while Gideon just hugged her knees to her chest and burned. 

“I always loved your eyes.”

Well, and there it is. Not enough words. Gideon tucked her head against her scarred knees and cried. Wasn’t like anyone could see her, anyway. 

She thought of the final battle against Cytherea a lifetime ago. In that lifetime, she could hear Harrow’s sharp mind directing her to take down the construct. They had worked so beautifully together, utterly in concert in both body and mind, though separate entirely. Then, at the end, Gideon had held Harrow against her chest, could feel her hands beneath her hands, her heartbeat against her heartbeat. They had driven the sword together to end the madness, had spoken to each other and understood each other completely. That’s the way this was meant to work, right? So why couldn’t she hold Harrow now?

Why did she have to be the one without a body? Harrow was the brilliant one. If the roles were switched, Harrow could jump into Gideon’s brain whenever she wanted, bossing Gideon around for a millennia. She was useless on this side of death’s door, apparently. She had no idea how to break through to her necromancer. It was enough to make her scream. 

In the end, though, she just began to talk. Gideon so rarely got the chance to just talk. Maybe Harrow was in shock. Something had to give, right?

“Look, Nonagesimus, we are going to figure this out. We’ve got to-- and we’ve certainly got the time. But you’ve got to pull yourself together. No offing yourself prematurely. I used to hate it when you copied me as kids. I wasn't trying to set a trend.” 

Gideon rambled on like that for a while, tears drying against her cheeks, her heartbeat returning to a steady pace. She peppered in pleas for Harrow to open her eyes with advice to eat something, say something. It devolved into random whistling noises and hand clapping, even a “Hey, Harrow, you know this means we’ve been sleeping together for a while. What do you think about that?” 

Nothing breached the void between them. Harrow continued to shake, eyes screwed shut, the tremors of loss finally breaking her down. Gideon pushed her hair back and sighed into her palms, the exhale morphing into a frustrated growl. 

Completely fed up with the insanity of it all, Gideon got off her ass and knelt directly in front of Harrow. Damn it all if she couldn't sense her, Harrow was hers. She reached out and tried her best to cup the necromancer’s cheek, to warm her cheekbones with the pads of her fingertips. She thought about how Harrow’s brow felt under her thumb that night in the pool, the way she had looked up at her like nothing else mattered in the world. She still couldn’t feel her, but she tried anyway. 

“Look, Harrow, it’s Gideon Nav Honesty Time, okay? Are you listening, because I’m only going to say this once. You can’t make me sit here and watch you die slowly like this, okay? I’m already dead, but that would destroy me. I need you, Harrow. I need you to live. I need you to get mad like you always do, and fight. I need you to figure this out so I can hold you again. There’s still too many words, but I’ll spill them all if you’ll just keep fighting for us. Keep fighting so I can look you in the eyes and let you see the truth of us, for once in our God-forsaken lives. We both deserve that, alright? And you deserve to live.” 

Gideon clenched her eyes shut against a flood of emotion threatened to overtake her. The weight of it all ached in her chest more than that damned rusted spike ever did. 

For a moment she could imagine the cool touch of Harrow’s tear stained face. She could pretend she felt Harrow’s brow relaxing for the first time in days under her touch. Her eyes were closed but she could see it: the way Harrow’s lips would part in gentle surprise at being held so gently, the way her eyes would find her own and suddenly know for sure everything they had left unsaid. 

Gideon sighed and opened her eyes, feeling defeated. Harrow had gone completely still, and if she didn’t know any better she could’ve sworn the girl had died right in that moment. Her face was turned as if to press into Gideon’s ephemeral palm, and she lifted her own hand up as if to hold it there. It passed right through. 

But Gideon felt warmth. Oh, she had to have felt something. She had to have felt her hand just then, had to feel the brush of her cheek. Her throat caught, choking on a moment of hope. Her voice came out in a whisper, a prayer. 

“Come on, my love. Listen to me for once in your life. Keep fighting.”

Harrow showed no sign of hearing. Instead, she seemed to slip into a fitful sleep, curled on the floor against her bed. Gideon stayed right beside her, watching her necromancer frown and twitch in response to some unknown nightmare. She was frustrated, to be sure, but couldn’t help feeling a sliver of hope at this new development. She was her own soul again, and she was with Harrow. They’d figure this out. The worst had already happened, after all. 

Hours later, Harrow woke up sore and aching, and Gideon watched as everything caught back up to her necromancer's tired mind. Harrowhark Nonagesimus shivered once more, then stood on shaky legs with surprising energy. She peeled off the smock with aching limbs and Gideon had the red-faced decency to cover her eyes. When she looked back up, Harrow was dressed in her old robes, clean and inexplicably repaired. She dabbed on the white and black face paint with the blind efficiency of daily practice. Once finished, she sat back on the bed and swayed for a moment, breathing deeply.

Harrow stood up and dragged herself to the mess hall. She found a few packs of dehydrated, nutrient rich meals and dutifully poured water over one, frowning as it swelled up into a jelly-like mass. She sat down and ate it all, then got up to prepare a second pack. Her face was dialed into a permanent scowl, determined. 

Gideon smiled, a half step behind her the whole way. 

“That’s my girl.”


End file.
